


The Better Part of Valor

by romanticalgirl



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:33:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discretion is good when you're a spy</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better Part of Valor

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/profile)[**oxoniensis**](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/) for the beta. For my darling [](http://hackthis.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://hackthis.livejournal.com/)**hackthis** on the occasion of her birthday! Happy birthday!
> 
> Originally posted 11-27-07

You spend a lot of time with your right hand.

That’s one of the first things Michael learned in training. Unofficially, of course, but then over half of what Michael learned was unofficial. When your job is to keep an eye on the bad guys, you have to know how to play by their rules. Which aren’t rules so much as whims, religious fervor and really large guns.

Some advice has been particularly practical and applicable. Sure, it’s good to know how to translate ‘I’m going to kill your mother and fuck her with the knife’ into Serbian, but it’s better to know that, no matter how hot or James Bond you think you are, you’re probably more likely to be spending the night alone with your Sig Sauer than you are with Ursula Andress.

But then, Michael’s never had a thing for blondes.

Still, when you’re stuck in Prague and there’s nothing but whiskey on the nightstand and static on the television, and you’ve cleaned your guns as many times as you can without looking like you’re compensating for something else, you do what you have to do to while away the hours.

Sometimes that’s looking through the latest issue of _Soldier of Fortune_ , and sometimes it’s jerking off and, when it gets really bad and you’ve been undercover for a little too long, you find yourself doing both.

That’s when it’s time to get the hell out of Prague.

For now though, Michael’s in Moscow and it’s cold enough to make Miami sound a bit less like hell and the airport’s closed down and snow lines the windows and the streets. The bad guys are doing what he wants, the good guys are staying the hell away, he’s had enough whiskey to make the night shimmer slightly and, as these things go, it could be worse.

It can always be worse.

It can also always be better.

He lays on the bed and stretches out, his cover ID earning him a suite worthy of anything the US has to offer. He was bored enough earlier to considering counting the threads just to make sure he wasn’t getting gypped, but instead he poured himself another whiskey. It’s on the nightstand now next to the remote, and Michael can’t help but flip through the channels, hoping for something that doesn’t depress him.

He runs his hand down his stomach, feeling the muscles contract underneath his touch, though his fingers are more adept at finding the slivers of scars that don’t show in the golden light from his bedside lamp or in the harsh glare of the TV. His pajama pants are more for show than anything, but they’re silk and it’s the kind of night that’s lonely enough for silk.

He carefully doesn’t think about Fiona or anyone else he’s left behind him, though Fiona’s the only name that sticks in his head, sticks to his ribs near where his heart would be if he thought himself capable of having one. Instead he thinks about models and actresses, bodies that are bodies and not brains and gunrunners and able to kick his ass.

Bodies that are sculptured and refined, not ragged hair and sweat and laughter. He slides his hand beneath the waistband, fingers pressing against the skin just above the jut of his cock, teasing through the dark sparse strands that slide down into a curled mass at the base. He wants Cindy Crawford and Iman and Helena Christensen, not the smell of gunpowder and heat and danger tangled with the damp hair and sweat on her skin.

“Shit.” He lets his head fall back and gives up any pretense of having control over his thoughts and pictures her, remembers her. He presses his hand against the skin, letting the head slide against the silk. His other hand grasps the waistband and tugs it down, his hips arching off the bed to slide the fabric over his cock, letting it bunch around his thighs, piles of silk on his skin, though all he can feel is the warmth of his hand around his cock, the tight circle of his fist at the base of it.

He thinks about the feeling rather than about her, letting her linger on the periphery of his consciousness, whispering dirty talk and dirtier words, cursing his name and begging him for more. Their relationship wasn’t just dangerous, it was volatile and unpredictable. Nitroglycerine and hormones mixed together until they both had little choice but to slam into one another and combust. The first time landed both of them in a reasonable facsimile of a hospital, and every time after that has ended with muscles he didn’t know he had aching. For Christmas one year, she gave him a bottle of painkillers.

He laughs, the sound throaty and thick as he remembers her face, sinking down on her knees as she held the present up, taking him in her mouth as he opened it. He laughed then, though the sound was swallowed up by a groan as her hand had curled around his balls, squeezing them until his knees nearly gave out, the closest either of them will ever come to begging for mercy.

His hand moves over his cock, curved tight around the shaft and squeezing with every stroke. Michael’s perfected the art of getting off without getting caught with his pants down, but this is different. Everything’s on track, which should be enough to scare the shit out of him, but really all he can do is lose himself in this. It’s rare enough Michael lets himself remember. Might as well enjoy it while he can.

Fiona’s mouth was always hot with liquor and smoke, though any thought of relaxing into it was quickly chased away with sharp bites and demanding hands. She took what she wanted, on top as often as not and always demanding, if not in command. He remembers rug burns and wall scrapes, bruises and broken bones, lacerations and bullet holes and frantic, desperate sex.

Michael groans, tightening his hand at the base of his cock as he strokes harder, faster. He can see her in his mind’s eye, feel her against him. Teeth and mouth and breasts and skin, body wet with sweat and exertion, danger vibrating off her as she straddled him, fucking him on whatever surface was handy when she felt the urge, the need, the thrill.

He hears her voice, urging him on, begging him for more. She excelled in whispered words, peppering his skin with adverbs until all he could see was the blur of her body over him, under him, around him. Harder, Michael. Faster, Michael. Deeper, Michael. More. He whispers the words in conjunction with his memory, the remembered heat of her clenched around him, her thighs tight enough to make him ache, bruises on his skin where her knees dug into his flesh.

Michael comes with a gasp, the room solidifying back around him. Gone is the dank dungeon beneath a crumbling, abandoned Irish castle serving as home to an IRA hit squad, and instead he’s on cotton sheets smooth enough to be silk and surrounded by the best his money can buy. He cleans himself up without thought, moving on automatic, his body in the moment, his brain back several years before.

He can still almost hear her. Or, worse, he can hear someone who sounds just like her in the hallway, just beyond the door of his room, bad Russian mangled even worse by the slightest lilt of an Irish accent. Michael scrambles out of bed, jerking his pajamas up with one hand and grabbing his weapon in the other as he situates himself at the edge of the mattress, gauging the distance to the door and how much cover he’s actually got.

The voice fades and Michael breathes again, nearly as turned on as he’d been when he’d started this whole thing. He’s safe for now, but just in case, he’s going to blow off those extra leisure days he had planned and get out of Moscow as soon as he can. Where Fiona Glenanne is concerned, safe is far, far better than sorry. That’s something else Michael learned early.

Unofficially, of course.  



End file.
